Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The 2012 Viewing Log with an explanation of my personally esoteric rating system and a terrible dearth of pics

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one of the year's 10s

I’ve elected to rate films on a ten scale to the first decimal place. I’ll add that my method for scoring doesn’t begin at 0.0. I start at 5.0 (similar to a teacher giving a certain amount of credit for putting name to paper) and then work forward or backward depending on the film’s quality (or lack thereof). One look below will show that a film need be particularly egregious to fall below a 5.0. Masterpiece level is 9.0 and above (with a little shading from 8.8 and 8.9) with 10s being the true high-points of cinema, the cream at the top of what may become my personal canon; the 8s are undisputedly great films; the 7s are good films, 7.9 being almost great and 7.0 barely making it; the 6s are either simply flaming mediocrity or films with such huge flaws they ultimately override any good or even great aspects about them; and the 5s are an indisputably unrewarding zone. 5.0 is a flat-line. Anything above that means the film had something, no matter how minuscule, which made the viewing something other than a waste of time. Anything below a 5.0 signifies that the movie was, in the words of somebody’s grumpy uncle, a truly heinous piece of garbage. Like any veteran film viewer, I’ve developed a pretty good bullshit detector, so scores below 5.0 will be rare. But I occasionally watch movies in a social context (that is to say I don’t pick ‘em), so it’s by no means out of the question that a true stinker will rear its ugly head. An asterisk accompanying a rating carries with it my belief that with an additional viewing or time to reflect (or other circumstances, such as a deeper appreciation for a director’s filmography), my ranking could easily change by more than a few tens of a point. A film with an asterisk is far more likely to improve in my esteem than otherwise. Ranking of films without the asterisk are by no means set in stone; I just feel far more confident that they won’t vary by more than a few tenths of a point. As a look above shows, the list of films viewed will include more than just feature film; documentaries, short films, avant-garde works, cartoons, even music videos on occasion. TV poses a problem: it will be included when I give it the attention it deserves (or doesn’t, as the case may be), which essentially reflects more on my aversion to tackle TV as an expressive medium than it does on any long-debated shortcomings or inherent differences between the small screen and the large one. Got that? Good.